


Time Delay

by nonelvis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:36:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're forty years late, Doctor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Delay

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [who_at_50](http://who-at-50.livejournal.com)'s 50th Anniversary Fanwork-a-thon-a-thon, and also because having watched all of Season 7 this year, I needed an excuse to try writing Three and Liz.

The benefit of being UNIT's chief scientific officer was that Liz Shaw's moonbase office had the best views of Earth, her homeworld rising in swaths of brilliant blue and white above the horizon.

The drawback was that until she'd started locking her door, she'd find strangers in her chair most days, backs to the door and transfixed by the planet peeking over the moon's silvery surface.

The lock hadn't deterred today's visitor, currently relaxing with his feet propped on Liz's desk. He had her unfinished report on recent lunar meteorite strikes in one hand, and the rose quartz from her mineral collection in the other, his fingers spiralling the rock across his palm. He looked no older than he had the day Liz met him: the same shaggy hair streaked like granite, the same cragged face; very nearly the same suit coat, only this one was purple velvet instead of black serge. His transport loomed incongruously in the far corner, blocking access to Liz's lateral files.

She limped in cane-first, but with the strongest stride she could manage.

"You're forty years late, Doctor."

The quartz stopped scribing circles. "Am I? Dear me, how time flies. How are you, Liz?"

"Older. Hopefully wiser. Wise enough to know you're sitting in my chair."

"Yes, yes, sorry about that. I can see you might need to sit down." He walked around her desk and grasped her free hand lightly, drawing her to the chair.

"It's just arthritis, Doctor. I'm not made of glass." She leaned against the desk and opened her arms to him. "And if you go one step farther without greeting me properly, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"My Liz," he said, and fell into her embrace. 

If he hugged her longer than he had before – well, it had been forty years, after all, at least for her. She wondered how long it had been for him.

When she finally let him go, he re-settled himself in one of the faux-Eames armchairs across from her desk. The rock resumed its motion.

"I see you've fixed your ship," Liz said. "Of course, I knew that already – UNIT's been keeping tabs on you for some time. You made quite a mess in –"

"Don't tell me, Liz. Knowing my own future could be dangerous."

"Fair enough. Funny being in the position of knowing more than you for a change. I rather like it."

"I shouldn't get accustomed to that feeling if I were you," he said. "Unless, of course, you can tell me what this rose quartz really is." He held it at eye level, as if Liz hadn't been watching him fidget with it for the past five minutes.

"I should have known you didn't turn up after forty years just for a friendly visit."

"This is a perfectly friendly visit, isn't it? I'm genuinely delighted to see you, you're genuinely delighted to see me, and now perhaps you'll tell me where you found this crystal."

"Where the meteorites landed, at the southeast edge of the Mare Imbrium. I was out for a walk. I like the unbroken horizon, and the low gravity feels good on my knee."

He leaned closer to her desk, elbows resting on his lap, and spoke softly. "I can fix that for you, you know. It's a simple matter for a bone and tissue regenerator."

"After you explain to me why you're so curious about that rock."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "My dear Liz, I expect you already know." That arrogant cleverness of his. It hadn't changed, either.

"And if I do?"

"Then I imagine you had a rather unusual experience you'd like to discuss with me."

Ah, the worst part of the Doctor's arrogant cleverness. He was, as usual, correct.

"I was holding it yesterday while I worked on my report," Liz began, "and suddenly I had the strangest vision. You and I were in a cell, and a military officer who looked just like me, only with black hair, was questioning us. Then the quartz started heating up – I had to put it back down before I burnt myself, and then the vision stopped. I was going to take it to the lab for analysis today."

"No need. It's not rose quartz, my dear, although I can see how your primitive Earth science might think it so. It's a Telamite scrying-crystal."

Liz stiffened in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. Primitive Earth science, indeed, as if she and her primitive science hadn't saved his life more than once. "Go on," she said.

"It vibrates on a temporal level. I heard it calling from a not-inconsiderable distance away. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you're sensitive in that range; you had quite a knack for helping me with the TARDIS."

"Thank you, Doctor." Pride crept into Liz's voice. It was silly, a woman as accomplished as she was taking pleasure from such a mild-mannered compliment; but it was a compliment from the Doctor, and his praise had always meant more than anyone else's.

"So," she continued, "you're just here to collect it from me."

"It's not safe in human hands, Liz. It shows alternate histories: things that could have happened. Things that might yet happen. A Time Lord brain's equipped to store that sort of conflicting knowledge. A human one isn't." He scratched his forehead, and his gaze twitched away from her. "But I admit the crystal also offered me a convenient excuse to see you."

"Forty years it's been since I last saw you," she said sharply, "and you think you need an excuse to pay a visit?"

He twitched some more, drummed his fingers on the chair's padded leather arm. They made a faint tapping noise in the silence Liz was deliberately allowing to continue.

"The way you left – it never did sit right with me," the Doctor finally said. "If I really did make you feel like all I needed was someone to pass me test tubes and call me 'brilliant,' I'm sorry. You're one of the most capable people I've ever met, Liz, which makes me wonder what you're still doing with this lot."

"'This lot,' as you call them, needed a chief scientific officer on the Moon. The Moon, Doctor. I don't know many scientists who'd have turned that down."

"I suppose you're right." He chuckled. "Look, Liz, I'm here with an offer. You helped me with the TARDIS all those times, and never once got to travel in her. Come with me, and let me show you the stars."

"I can see the stars from my office, Doctor, and I'm getting a bit old for adventure."

"Nonsense. You look as fit as you did the day we met."

"That's very gracious of you, you old liar."

"Just one trip, Liz. I'll fix that dodgy knee of yours, and we'll go anywhere you like. Anytime you like, for that matter. The TARDIS is a time machine, after all."

"I remember. I haven't gone _that_ senile yet."

He rose, brushing off those dapper velvet trousers, and extended his hand to her. "Telamos IV is lovely this time of year. And the scrying-crystal quarry's near the Forgotten Sea. I could take you for a ride on the giant flying fish."

All those tales he'd told her in the lab, they'd sounded utterly mental. And here he was again, the same lunacy on his lips, but she'd known in the back of her mind then that the stories were true, and she'd seen enough in her life now to know that for certain.

Flying fish might be just fine, once her knee was fixed.

Liz pushed herself up from her chair, grasping her cane in her right hand, and the Doctor's hand in her left. "Show me these fish of yours," she said.

"Ah, Liz," he said, clasping her hand with both of his, "I'll show you everything."


End file.
